Tuesday, October 29, 2013

child (you have you)

child (you have you)

“I wish everybody knew/What's so great about you”


you don’t owe anyone
anything, child
until you pay you

pay yourself well, often, & true
everyone else can wait
they all have other things to do

you have you
child
you have you

---

[and then the Southern version]

child (you have you)


you don’t owe nobody
nothing, child
until you pay you

pay yourself well, often, & true
everyone else can wait
they all have other things to do

you have you
child
you have you

---


Sunday, October 20, 2013

hindsight

hindsight


hindsight is not 20/20
although it makes a pithy saying

hindsight is not a microscope
although it focuses the mind’s eye

hindsight is a type of telescope
we use to pull back the past over our shoulder

hindsight is the narrow delusion of memory
that reconstructs as best as we are capable

if only i had known what i know now
or i would do everything differently this time

but we wouldn’t and we won’t and we can’t
because hindsight is not 20/20

and foresight is a fool’s paradise
and sight is elusive and fleeting

all shadows and cardboard like a photograph
or a novel or the film everyone watches instead

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

the absence of her

the absence of her

"This is the Book, these are the Pages, here is the Writing."
MaddAddam, Margaret Atwood


mostly it is true
that men wear their affections
their passions and longings
their carnal cravings

on their skin and in their hands
as well as their lips and tongues
because it is palpable and corporeal
like washing up on shore from a sunken ship

but just as he had learned (he thought)
to live (if it could be called “living”)
with the absence of her (like an anchor)
he found himself in tears on the couch

in the final chapters of the book
he had wanted to read with her
just to be able to talk about with her
he was reduced to sobbing uncontrollably

yes it was the book of course
but it was the book you see
in the absence of her that twisted
him inside out and left him that alone

wiping tears away from his contacts
and off the lenses of his reading glasses
his chest heaving and aching
and his skin a moon-lit desert (an empty hand)

Thursday, October 10, 2013

distance

distance

“Everywhere I am is just another thing without you in it.”
“Fashion Coat,” Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers, The National

we are separated by 2 years and 300 miles
when you wake up there alone in your bed

you feel something on the back of your knee
and start to reach down or pull back the covers

but you don’t realizing what the sensation is
two lips on the back of the knee like a poem

and then you say to me without speaking aloud
that you have been talking with cats in your dreams

Nakata i whisper separated by 2 years and 300 miles
the taste of the back of your knee lingering on my lips

Thursday, October 3, 2013

god

god


"He sounds both anxious and supercharged, the way kids used to sound if it was a parade or a fireworks display—something brief and miraculous." Madd Addam, Margaret Atwood


when i look at any child
it is easy to believe in god

when i look at most adults
it is impossible to believe in god

and then there is you
god, yes, there is you

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

warning: writers (if)

warning: writers (if)

if you find your life
entangled with a writer
heed this warning

if you find yourself
a writer’s lover or spouse

if you find yourself
(god forbid) a writer’s child

if you need food shelter or clothing
or (god forbid) an affectionate hand

if you need even a trace of selfless intimacy
thisi mean, this is all you will get

words

stark and solitary across a page
and they will be as satisfying as

tearing a page from a novel
to slip into your dry mouth